atebit
Well-Known Member
- Thread starter
- #1
Back in the middle of July, Rivian made a service appointment for my truck to be picked up on Sunday 14 Aug for a service appointment in Brooklyn starting on 15 Aug.
Early Sunday morning I got a text message from the towing provider that they would be there within 2-3 hours. When they hadn’t arrived by mid-afternoon, I called Rivian to follow up. When the agent called me back, he told me that the towing company actually wasn’t planning on coming on Sunday at all, and that they were planning to come on Monday. Whether/when this was communicated to Rivian from the towing company, the agent couldn’t tell me. But clearly, Rivian’s using a “low touch” model here and not tracking or following up on what their contractors are doing. Net-net, the agent claimed that “after escalating to the highest levels” the flatbed would be here at my home no later than 0800 on Monday.
That turned out to be closer to 10:30 Monday morning. The driver took a bunch of pictures of the truck. I asked how many Rivians he had transported…”more than 10” was the answer. So after him getting it up on the flatbed, getting out & proceeding to strap down the tires, I askedif he had put the truck in Service Mode. He said that he had never heard of it. So Itold him that he needed to put the truck in the lowest ride height and where to set device mode in the menus. I also sent him a screenshot of the relevant page on the manual, which he was eager to see. I was doubly concerned since there was already one other non-Rivian truck on the flatbed. He told me that Brooklyn wasn’t his first stop, meaning that the Rivian was going to have to come off & on again, and I wanted to make sure he knew I expected that it would go back in service mode for the final part of the ride & he agreed. So at least this driver seems to “want to do it right”.
When I called Rivian about the experience, the agent said all their contractors are instructed how to load/unload the trucks. But if all they do is send a PDF, the tow companies probably don’t even bother to read them since they tow “hundreds of cars a month”. Again, Rivian probably taking a low-touch approach to something that, at least at this stage, requires a lot of supervision.
I was also promised a rental truck. Enterprise called me Monday morning wondering where I was (since I was tied up waiting for my truck to be on its way). When I inquired about the type of vehicle, he told me that they had no pickup trucks available at all in the area. So right now Rivian is trying to sort that out.
So IMHO, some of this is “growing pains, but a lot of it Rivian should know better and be applying a more high-touch model to the process. Anyone that works with third party providers knows how easily things can go off the rails, especially with nascent engagements with lots of “moving parts”. Of course, highly-touch costs more in terms of time, resources & dollars. But not doing a good enough job here is going to cost them in customer sentiment, which will likely outweigh the costs of being more higher-touch in the long run.
Once they start working on the truck I’ll update on how the actual service process is going.
Early Sunday morning I got a text message from the towing provider that they would be there within 2-3 hours. When they hadn’t arrived by mid-afternoon, I called Rivian to follow up. When the agent called me back, he told me that the towing company actually wasn’t planning on coming on Sunday at all, and that they were planning to come on Monday. Whether/when this was communicated to Rivian from the towing company, the agent couldn’t tell me. But clearly, Rivian’s using a “low touch” model here and not tracking or following up on what their contractors are doing. Net-net, the agent claimed that “after escalating to the highest levels” the flatbed would be here at my home no later than 0800 on Monday.
That turned out to be closer to 10:30 Monday morning. The driver took a bunch of pictures of the truck. I asked how many Rivians he had transported…”more than 10” was the answer. So after him getting it up on the flatbed, getting out & proceeding to strap down the tires, I askedif he had put the truck in Service Mode. He said that he had never heard of it. So Itold him that he needed to put the truck in the lowest ride height and where to set device mode in the menus. I also sent him a screenshot of the relevant page on the manual, which he was eager to see. I was doubly concerned since there was already one other non-Rivian truck on the flatbed. He told me that Brooklyn wasn’t his first stop, meaning that the Rivian was going to have to come off & on again, and I wanted to make sure he knew I expected that it would go back in service mode for the final part of the ride & he agreed. So at least this driver seems to “want to do it right”.
When I called Rivian about the experience, the agent said all their contractors are instructed how to load/unload the trucks. But if all they do is send a PDF, the tow companies probably don’t even bother to read them since they tow “hundreds of cars a month”. Again, Rivian probably taking a low-touch approach to something that, at least at this stage, requires a lot of supervision.
I was also promised a rental truck. Enterprise called me Monday morning wondering where I was (since I was tied up waiting for my truck to be on its way). When I inquired about the type of vehicle, he told me that they had no pickup trucks available at all in the area. So right now Rivian is trying to sort that out.
So IMHO, some of this is “growing pains, but a lot of it Rivian should know better and be applying a more high-touch model to the process. Anyone that works with third party providers knows how easily things can go off the rails, especially with nascent engagements with lots of “moving parts”. Of course, highly-touch costs more in terms of time, resources & dollars. But not doing a good enough job here is going to cost them in customer sentiment, which will likely outweigh the costs of being more higher-touch in the long run.
Once they start working on the truck I’ll update on how the actual service process is going.
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